


Beyond The Vale | Coffee - Pastries - Extradimensional Treats

by mercuryhatter



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Cecil is a nonbinary Eldritch horror, Other, the coffeeshop is a little... unconventional, who runs a coffeeshop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos is not sure if the misspelling of "veil" is supposed to be a pun or if the shop proprietor actually just can't spell, but that's the least of his concerns when the love of his life has three eyes and sometimes tentacles, and there's a floating kitten living a few inches above Carlos' nightstand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond The Vale | Coffee - Pastries - Extradimensional Treats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tumblr user i-have-never-been-wise (Theo)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tumblr+user+i-have-never-been-wise+%28Theo%29).



               The coffeeshop was a tiny place tucked into a dim corner that was just a few stray cats away from being an alley, and, as such, it was rather dark and smelled… well, actually, it didn’t smell much like alley at all. In fact, it smelled rather like a combination of espresso, cinnamon, and ozone. Even stranger than this was how not-unpleasant the colliding odors turned out to be. The smell, and the bright pink letters in neon announcing “Beyond The Vale | Coffee – Pastries – Extradimensional Treats” were the only things distinguishing the shop from the rest of the blackened brick. It was not, strictly speaking, the sort of place Carlos would usually patronize, but it was past midnight on his third day of finals and at this point his brain tended to revert to an autopilot consisting only of the commands “caffeine” and “now” at the sight of the word “coffee” (even if that word was followed by the words “extradimensional treats”). Before Carlos really had time to consider his life choices, or even to register that he’d made one, he was in the shop, ordering a hazelnut latte from a barista with three gorgeous brown eyes.

                It wasn’t until Carlos was taking his Advanced Mathematical Theory final the following morning that he registered the terrifying reality behind this memory, and so he spent the next three hours combing the city high and low while the sun burnt in the sky for Beyond The Vale, before conceding to himself that the whole thing must have been a sleep-deprived hallucination.

                This comfortable concession was abruptly shattered when he arrived home and found a paper cup on his kitchen counter, smelling strongly of hazelnut and ozone, and emblazoned with familiar pink letters: “B.T.V | Coffee – Pastries – Ex. Dim. Treats.”

                Carlos threw the cup away and tried very hard to believe that “Ex. Dim.” meant something like “extra Dimetapp,” which was a difficult belief to swallow when one was also attempting to forget that the incident with the coffeeshop had ever happened at all, when all the while a third and rather larger part of one’s brain was recording every memory in minute detail, for science.

~~~ _Beyond The Vale Complimentary Newsletter~~~_

_My dear readers, welcome to Beyond The Vale, purveyor of fine coffees, finer pastries, and the absolute finest in extradimensional treats. I am pleased to report that we had a brand new customer yesterday, a nice change from the regular Hoodied Figures, as it is quite tiresome to serve coffee to beings you are not allowed to acknowledge nor think about nor look directly at. Our new customer’s name is Carlos, he wears a lab coat and red sneakers, and he has the most perfect and beautiful hair I have ever had the pleasure to see and remember. He ordered a hazelnut latte, and, dear readers, I must inform you… I fell in love instantly._

_In other news, the possessed espresso machine appears to have become dormant once more, after a week of producing odd shrieking noises and bright green foam. I am particularly relieved, as I would hate to accidentally serve Carlos a demonic latte. We all remember what happened to the last customer who received a demonic latte. Luckily, a bit of the blood and plenty of the arcane symbols from that last encounter remain on the possessed machine, differentiating it from the well-behaved machine, so hopefully such a mistake will not come to pass._

_Next week’s location, for three-dimensional Earth-dwellers, may be found at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Yarrow Street. For those visitors coming to us from other planets, dimensions, and/or universes, the coordinates are as follows: 45*fnke~399.45„»,0.fish._

_And now, the weather._

                The second time Carlos visited Beyond The Vale, the sun was down, and he was almost absolutely certain that the shop was in a different place than where he had left it. The barista this time had long red hair and, at first glance, two blue (if rather opalescent) eyes. However, something about the pink neon and the ultraviolet lamps gave the barista several dozen eyes and a respectable amount of winglike shadows whenever Carlos wasn’t looking at them straight on. The hazelnut latte wasn’t quite as good as the last one, but Carlos took it to a table and resolutely set out his notebook and several beeping, humming instruments. He  was prepared for anything in his weekend lab coat and bearing his favorite pen, but he did miss several pertinent readings while trying to see enough eyes to count underneath the hoods of some of the other patrons. While taking several redundant readings, he also missed the person in the far corner, with three beautiful brown eyes, many slightly-too-squiggly braids, and a dreamy expression, writing in a notebook of their own.

                Carlos brought his notebook and his instruments to his professors in the physics department, earnestly pitching a senior thesis based on his theoretically impossible readings, but he was told quite abruptly that there was no such place as Beyond The Vale, that “extradimensional” wasn’t even a word, and that if he wanted to write fantasy he should transfer to the English department. Carlos replied heatedly and pointedly in Spanish, and was so busy stomping home that he hardly even noticed the levitating kitten by his door, a pink ribbon bright around its neck. But, even when angry, Carlos was not the sort to not notice anything that levitates, and soon his indignation was forgotten in a flurry of scientific readings and photographs that all turned out far too blurry to be useful.

                When he was done, he took the kitten inside with him and fed it a saucer of milk before letting it sleep floating above his nightstand.

_~~~Beyond The Vale Complimentary Newsletter~~~_

_My dear readers, welcome to Beyond The Vale, purveyor of fine coffees, finer pastries, and the absolute finest in extradimensional treats. I have some exciting news, but first, a public service announcement:_

_Do not acknowledge the Hoodied Figures. Do not compliment their sweaters. Do not ask them where they got their shoes. Do not attempt to speak with them. The Hoodied Figures will not harm you._

_Back to the news, dear readers: the levitating tomcat in the Tentacled Appendages Bathroom has given birth to kittens! I gave one to Carlos, as he and his beautiful hair seem to be on their way to becoming a regular here at Beyond The Vale, and I have distributed the other three around the shop for your petting pleasure. Much like their parent, the kittens appear to enjoy milk, scones, the blood of one’s enemies, and being scratched behind the ears. Do feel free to feed them!_

_An update on the espresso machine’s possession: two days ago, a strange, sparkling mist started to gather around the possessed espresso machine. Within a few hours, the mist had resolved itself into the shapes of several fluttering birds that emitted a pretty but oddly ominous song without ever opening their barely corporeal beaks. Erika asked to keep them as pets, and I saw no harm in that, so we believe that the machine is once again safe for use, and possibly even un-possessed!_

_Next week’s location, dear readers, may be found for three-dimensional Earth-dwellers at 146 Obsidian Lane, and for all others, at the coordinates 8u342..)34 <<2`@goldilocks._

                After his sixth visit to Beyond The Vale, Carlos began recording the addresses that the shop occupied each time he visited. His first notebook grew into three, with napkins or flattened coffee sleeves slipped between the pages for times when he forgot that he wasn’t simply arriving for the hazelnut lattes or the barista whose name was Cecil. Embarrassingly, his notes had grown less and less scientific and more and more about the way Cecil’s three eyes blinked out of sync with each other but still in a predictable and pleasingly rhythmic manner, or about the way Cecil’s braids contracted along Cecil’s neck in accompaniment to a bashful smile, but curled upwards with a laugh, or about the way Cecil’s tattoos squiggled along Cecil’s skin and sometimes spoke instead of Cecil’s mouth.

                On Carlos’ eighth visit, he kissed that mouth, and all of Cecil’s tattoos sighed in unison, and all of Cecil’s eyes closed at the same time.

                On Carlos’ eleventh visit, shortly after he’d gotten a hair cut from one of the first-year cosmetology students, he discovered that sometimes Cecil had tentacles, and that sometimes Cecil’s brown eyes glowed bright green, and that sometimes Cecil’s braids writhed in a way that didn’t seem to quite fit into the fabric of reality.

                The tentacles were a rather fetching shade of oil spill and desert mirage, and when Carlos told Cecil this, the green faded from Cecil’s eyes and Cecil blushed bright blue all over.

                On Cecil’s first visit, Cecil brought Carlos a ring made of tiny interlocked snakes, and Carlos spent three hours telling Cecil animatedly all the properties he could discover about the ring while Cecil’s eyes blinked dreamily in rhythm and all of Cecil’s tattoos smiled, because Cecil’s mouth was too happy to remember how.

                (There were no visits for a while, but when there were again, Cecil regaled Carlos with tales of tumbling through several consecutive wormholes because Cecil had been _sooo happy_ on the way home that one had swallowed Cecil up before Cecil had had time to notice.)

_Dear Readers,_

_You are cordially invited to a Ceremony of Wedding between one Cecil Baldwin and one Carlos the Scientist. This Ceremony will take place on July 2 nd in the three-dimensional Earthly plane at approximately 3:00 A.M. Visitors from other planets, dimensions, and/or universes may find their way with the coordinates #@$r34q.f3/tree. All Hoodied Figures are asked to please stand in the back, and all espresso demons are asked to please keep the bloodshed to a minimum, and feed any leftovers to the kittens. All attendees are subject to noninvasive scientific testing and free pastries. _


End file.
